Area of course:

Lasercutting Workshop

Today we took part in a laser cutting workshop with Steve in the B block.

After seeing the laser cutting machine which is intimidatingly big, I was surprised at how easy the process was. It was simple because the machine did the most of the work for you.

All we had to do was create a piece on Adobe Illustrator which would then be cut out on the laser cutter. I chose to make a cutout of my name, so for this I wrote out ‘Amber’ and then turned it into an outline (it would not have cut it out if I had not made it an outline).

I cut it out of a plate of wood and then a piece of coloured acrylic too. I was then able to swap the letters.

Because some of the letters have hollows in such as the ‘b’ and the ‘e’, if I were to do this again, I would use a more stencil-like font so that they would still be attached and therefore would not fall out.

The letterforms that were cut out were extremely delicate and fragile, but they could be used for other things too, such as being stuck onto plaques to make more stick-out 3D pieces, and are effective even just on their own.

Below are pictures of the laser cutting machine itself and then of the laser cutting machine at work: